


wrap my roots around my bones

by bessemerprocess



Category: Killer Women
Genre: Abuse, Abuse of Authority, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death Wish, Domestic Violence, Drug Smuggling, Everything Gets Worse, Gen, Nothing gets fixed, Rick Perry cameo, Suicide, abuse of a political office, death of a major character, death of an abuse victim, marital rape, returning to an abusive situation, title borrowed from Delta Rae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 21:16:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1526060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the charges against Billy Parker get dropped, swept under the rug so cleanly it's like it never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrap my roots around my bones

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for warnings.
> 
> Title from Delta Rae's I Will Never Die.

Dan is surprised to see Jake Colton when the door opens. He’s been expecting a whole host of things. He’s braced for tears or a punch in the face, for understanding or for hate. He’s braced for Molly, Colton is something else entirely.

She’s never told him why she left her marriage, only that she had. Even after Colton had subpoenaed him, all Dan knows is that Molly hates Jake and Jake can’t let Molly go. He can’t imagine any scenario in which Colton being here is a good thing.

“Agent Winston.”

“Senator.” Dan returns the nod, and heads inside, a trail of cops and DEA on his heels, warrant in hand. 

“I’m sorry to tell you this. We arrested Billy tonight. He’s been smuggling drugs in from Mexico,” Dan says when they reach Molly and Becca. Colton joins the women on the couch, his hand on Molly’s knee. She just lets him, and Dan can’t for the life of him figure out why, so he keeps talking. “The police officers with me have a warrant to search the house.”

Molly just nods. She clearly knows that Billy’s been arrested, and Dan has to wonder at what kind of contacts Colton has in the DEA and local law enforcement to get that information. Wonders if he’s the one with the power to refuse Billy a CI deal.

It’s just as clear that Becca hadn’t known about the arrest, and she swallows back tears as Molly takes her hand and whispers comforting nonsense. 

“We’ll get you and the girls a hotel room for the night,” Colton says to Becca after she calms some. “I assume you’ll be okay with Becca waking the girls up and taking them out of here before the house is searched.” Colton’s staring him down like he’d like Dan to challenge him, like he wants to land a solid punch on something, but is holding back out of propriety, hoping Dan will escalate first.

“One of the officers will have to come with you, but that will be just fine,” Dan says to Becca, and nods to one of the officers. He’s not going to make this any worse than it has to be. Becca goes, leaving him with Molly and Colton. 

This silence is stifling, but Dan can't be the first one to talk, so there they stay until Becca returns. 

Becca carries Lulu still asleep out to Colton’s car, with Hailey at her heels, and now Dan wants to punch something. Those little girls are having their lives turned upside down because of their father's choices. Stupid, stupid choices. 

“There’ll be an arraignment in the morning,” Dan says, once Becca and the girls are out of earshot, “Get him a good lawyer and he might make bail.”

Molly nods, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to say something, but instead it’s Colton that speaks. “He’ll have the best. Now, I’m going to take Becca and the girls to a hotel, and my wife home with me, and let you do your job, Agent Winston.”

Molly doesn’t argue with him, and Dan still doesn’t know why. “Molly?”

“We should be on our way,” Molly says, “Let me just speak with Agent Winston for a moment.” She looks at Jake and he gives her the smallest of nods, before she stands. Its been seven hours since Dan was supposed to be home with Molly, seven hours and one arrest, and everything has changed and he doesn't know why. 

He reaches for her when they get to the door, but she turns away from his hand. “Molly.” Her name is a little to plantative, a little too lost on his tongue, but he’s not sure what else to say. “You’re going home with him?”

“It’s all going to be okay, Dan,” she says, but her tight smile and the way she’s wrapped her arms around herself say something else instead. “He’s my husband.”

“You don’t have to do this.” He’s begging now, and that’s not how he thought this night was going to end. Dan may not know the whole picture but he’s filling in pieces left and right, and even if she won’t say it, he knows she sacrificing herself for her brother. Sacrificing herself, sacrificing him, them, any hopes for their future. 

“But I’m going to,” she says, so kindly it hurts somewhere deep in his gut. “This is what I want.”

“Okay,” he says, adding his lie to hers, “okay.” 

* * * 

Molly has to steel herself every time Jake reaches for her. She can’t flinch, can’t react, even though everything in her is screaming to run. She goes back to Jake and all the charges against Billy will be dropped and the financial problems that caused all of this will go away, too. It’s a fairytale bargain, she thinks. Not a Disney one, though. It’s a tale written by the Grimm brothers, where everything has to paid for in blood. 

“You should stay with us tonight,” Becca says, in the lobby of the hotel. 

“It will be fine. Go on up, and Jake and I will take care of this.” Taking care of things is what Molly does. She’s going to take care of her brother. He’ll be okay and the ranch will stay in Parker hands and Lulu and Hailey will have a father. 

“If you’re sure,” Becca replies dubiously, and Molly knows she wants an explanation, wants answers Molly can’t give her. All Molly can give her is Billy and a future, and so that is what she is going to do.

Lulu and Hailey both hug her a subdued goodnight, and Becca looks like she wants to ask her to stay again, before Jake ushers them into the elevator. 

The ride to Jake’s place is silent.

“I’ll take the couch,” Molly says, as she and Jake stand in the living room of Jake’s new place. He’d kept most of the furniture when she’d left and never bothered to replace it. It looks just as perfect in the new place as the old. Clean and sharp, with nothing out of place. A space built more to impress guests than to live in.

“You’re my wife,” Jake replies. Molly had known it wasn’t going to be that easy, but she’d hoped. She should probably forget about hope now. It will be less painful in the long run. 

Molly nods, and follows him into the bedroom. It’s so easy to fall right back into those ruts she’d dug for herself over the years, so easy to be afraid again. 

She lays down in bed next to him. No matter how easy it is, it is still the hardest thing she’s had to do in a long time, and she keeps reminding herself that this is for Billy, for her family. 

The sheets are cool against her skin, but Jake has always run warm, and his touch burns. He pulls her against his chest, spooning around her like this is normal, like this is what they do, and she breaths to a count in her head so that she won’t hyperventilate. Molly knows all those little tricks, knows how to get to those places far away in her head where she can be safe. 

Jake doesn’t try anything else, just falls asleep around her, suffocating her with just his presence. 

In the morning, she’s not sure she’s slept at all.

* * *

All the charges get dropped against Billy Parker. Dan tries not to be too surprised about this either, but it was a federal charge, one that could’ve seen Billy in jail for years, the Parker ranch seized, and Molly out of a job. Instead it gets swept so cleanly under the rug that its like it never happened. 

He has a week’s worth of evidence on top of the man being caught red handed that says otherwise. Billy Parker’s financials, records of the mounting debt, suspicious deposits, they all paint a picture of a man desperate to save his family’s land. Dan’s never loved a place so much he’d risk his life and freedom to keep it, but he’s also never had land that was passed to his daddy from his daddy, and his daddy from his. Four generations of Parker men have raised cattle on that land. Four generations of familial duty pushing a man to desperation. 

Dan swings by the Rangers to tell Molly about the charges in person, but she’s not there. “She took leave,” Luis tells him. “The thing with her brother, it seemed better for there to be no questions about her involvement until it got settled.” They’d become friendly because of Molly, him and the Lieutenant, and he has never needed a guide through the Parker minefield than he does now.

“You should see her tomorrow then,” Dan replies, hoping that Luis actually will. Molly hasn’t answered any of his calls since Billy was arrested, and Dan is sure that he won’t get a sunny welcome if he darkens Jake Colton’s door.

“Dropping those charges must have taken some strings pulled,” Luis says. Dan knows he’s fishing for more information, but all he has is speculation and worries, nothing to be shared, so he just shrugs.

“I couldn’t say.” 

“You mean you won’t say.”

“That, too.”

* * *

Molly comes back to work, and tries to pretend nothing has changed. Her desk is still her desk and the Lieutenant is still the Lieutenant, and nothing has changed. She is a Texas Ranger and her job is to help people.

It would help if the Lieutenant stopped giving her the side-eye. He knows something has happened, there’s nothing she can do about that. Going back to Jake was always going to look suspicious. The way the charges against Billy disappeared isn’t helping, either. Anyone with eyes to see knows she struck a deal with Jake to save her brother, she just needs to keep the particulars of the deal out of the picture.

The first month back, the Lieutenant keeps her on short leash. A counterfeit ring being run by a couple of talented teenagers, a custody related kidnapping, nothing that keeps her away from home. Most nights she makes it in time for dinner. Jake smiles like this is his due. They don’t even argue about her job, which is all they did for the last six month of their marriage. That’s part of the deal, she stays at work. Molly is waiting for the hammer to fall, though. For each of her carefully negotiated conditions to be eroded away like so much dust. Jake's been hinting that she's working too many hour, has been too distracted. He hates that people still call her Ranger Parker, that she drives all over the state by herself, that she talks to other men at all. 

That's how it always worked. Molly tells Jake what she wants, and Jake slowly grinds the dirt out from under her feet until she's left standing on the ground he's chosen. She gets to stay at work until it will no longer be suspicious for her to quit, she gets to see Billy and Becca and the girls until it seems natural for her to not be able to make family dinners. Until she's alone again and there is no one she can go to for help. It's the same thing all over again and there's nothing she can do about it, not without Billy going to prison and the ranch being sold. 

It's the house she was born in and the land she learned to walk on. Where she learned to ride a horse and lasso cattle. It's where her mama died, where her daddy taught her to dance, where she and Billy shot cans off the porch rail. It's where her father married her mother, where her grandfather married her grandmother. It's four generations of Parker blood and Parker sweat. Parker hopes and dreams. It's Hailey and Lulu's future. As long as she stays with Jake, it's the one rock solid part of their agreement. The ranch goes to Hailey and Lulu and no one, not Jake, not Billy, not even Molly herself can take that away from them. Not as long as Molly stays married to Jake. 

Jake grabs her arm the first time she flinches away from him. It's late and she's tired and she doesn't think, just reacts. He grabs her arm and drags her into bed and she goes somewhere the bruises won't hurt while he does what he does. 

She goes to work in the morning. There are bruises on her arms, but she’s never gotten out of the habit of long sleeves, and so they go unseen, even by people who are trying to look. The Lieutenant is definitely trying to look. 

Still he gives her a case, a big one this time, like he finally trusts her to handle it again. Molly's not sure what that means, but more than anything she wants to do her job, so she takes the file and runs with it. It's almost a week later that she figures out she's making a run straight at the Rodriguez cartel. 

* * *

“We’ve got a case, it’s looking like DEA territory,” Luis says. “I’d like to bring you in.”

“Sure,” Dan says, because its his job, and because he knows if Luis is asking for him, it’s Molly’s case.

"We thought Ignacio Loya got into it with the Ninth Street boys over a girl. Three of the Ninth Streeters ended up dead and the girl, Gloria Hernandez, is missing. She's gone without a trace for almost two weeks. Except she showed up in San Antonio this morning and killed a cop." Luis hands him the files so he can look at the details. 

"Molly," Luis calls, waving her into the office. 

Dan looks up to catch her framed by the doorway, sun in her hair and he has to stop himself from reaching for her. She's just as beautiful as the last time he held her in his arms. 

She doesn't smile at him, just nods to Luis. "What's up, Lieutenant?"

"I'm drafting Winston as backup. Take him and figure out what is going on before someone else gets shot." 

Molly nods again. "Sure thing."

***

Having Dan back at her side, is terrible and perfect and so very painful. She wants to reach out for him. Wants to keep driving West and never stop, wants to tell him the whole truth. 

Molly does none of these things. She can't. Dan is temptation and hope and everything Molly can't have. She's made her choice and she won't let it all come to nothing because the road she's walking is hard. 

Instead she focuses on the job and being the professional she is. She side steps every question and attempt to talk about her personal life. Everything has to be about the case, so that's what she does. 

Jake, of course, doesn't see it that way. 

"I heard Danny boy was sniffing around again," Jake says. He's drunk, just enough to be mean. If she can get two more drinks in him, he'll pass out, but it doesn't look like that's what's going to happen tonight. 

"The Lieutenant wanted a DEA consult, he's the DEA agent on scene," she says. It's true, but she knows that the Lieutenant is suspicious, that he's figured out enough to be worried, and Dan is his solution to that. Throw them together, since Molly has clearly been avoiding Dan, and see what shakes out. 

"The Lieutenant, huh?" Jake sneers. He's winding himself up, and it's going to be nasty, she knows.

She can't live like this. She can't leave either. 

Jake isn't going to stop. He didn't stop before. He tried to kill her before. His hands wrapped around her neck as the world went gray. She'd almost welcomed it then. 

Molly's not sure if she'd welcome it now, and those aren't thoughts she wants to be having. Surviving Jake requires wanting to survive. If she gives that up, she's not so sure what will happen, but it's become increasingly difficult to hold on to wanting to live. 

She's stiff and sore in the morning, and there'd been no sleep for her besides. She pulls on a white button up to cover most if the bruises, but it can't do much for the dark circles under her eyes. Concealer helps, but Molly knows it can't hide the slowness off her walk or the flinches she can no longer seem to control. 

Dan is sitting on her desk, jelly doughnut in hand when she arrives. "Got a lead. CI says our girl is laying low down in Hondo." 

Hondo is out on the other side of San Antonio, two plus hours out from the Austin office. Two hours in a car with Dan. 

This is the first time she’s been in a vehicle with Dan since this all happened. They keep up meaningless chatter for the first half hour, and when they fall silent, she turns up the radio. Rodney Atkins sings about going through hell, and she tried to relax into the music and pretend like it any other assignment, any other car ride.

They stop for gas outside Castroville, because Dan refuses to let the tank dip below half full. He's a Boy Scout like that, always prepared. 

She heads inside to grab two Dr. Peppers while Dan tops off the tank, and when she comes back out, he’s leaning against the side of the truck with that grin of his. For a moment, she regrets everything. Regrets that she can’t throw her arms around him and kiss him silly. Regrets that they can’t just get in the truck and disappear over the horizon. Regrets missing out on the future with him that she had sacrificed. 

Molly shakes the thoughts away and leans against the truck with him to soak in the sun and the endless blue sky. The perfect Texas day. 

Dan uncaps his drink and takes a long, slow drink. Molly keeps her eyes on the sky, doesn’t look at his long neck or the way he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand when he’s done. 

She can’t stop herself from commenting though. “You’re still a barbarian.”

“I have the best table manners ever taught in a barn,” he replies, turning the full force of his smile on her. 

“Heathen,” she says, and swats at him.

Dan grabs her wrist to pull her towards him, and she pulls away, hissing in pain.

His eyes narrow and he pushes up her sleeve before she can stop him. 

***

The minute he sees the bruises, all the pieces fall into place. 

"I'll kill him," he says, knowing the minute it comes out of his mouth that it's the wrong thing to say. 

"You will do no such thing, Agent Winston." Molly is glaring at him, like she might just be considering killing him herself. 

"Molly," he starts, but she cuts him off. 

"This is not a topic for conversation," she says, and Dan just stares at her. If the fact that she left their bed to go back to her abusive husband isn't the only topic of conversation he doesn't know what is. 

"He's hurting you," Dan says, because he doesn't know what else to say. 

"And it's none of your business." 

"I love you and he's beating the hell out of you. Of course it's my business."

“My body and my business,” she says, just as stubborn as she always is. 

“I disagree with you here. The state disagrees with you here,” he points out.

“Fuck the state. You and I know exactly how those laws are applied, and Jake Colton’s never going to see the inside of a courtroom for this, not now that I’ve gone back to him,” she says.

“If you’re not going to take him to court and you’re not going to let me kill him, what are you going to do,” he asks.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she answers, but he knows she’s lying.

They get back into the truck with nothing settled. 

***

Apparently Gloria has always been the one behind the Rodriguez cartel in San Antonio. Ignacio was just a convenient cover in case things went wrong. It's amazing what CIs will tell you in the right circumstances, Dan thinks. Like that Gloria and her grandmother are extremely close. 

Her grandmother's house in Hondo is a double wide. Immaculately clean and clearly well taken care of, for all that it's worn. The old lady is tiny but fierce and she serves them coffee while telling them they'll never lay a hand on her granddaughter. 

They leave not knowing anything much more than when they started. 

Except that Gloria has apparently been sent off to get groceries for her grandmother. She is walking up the front path with a paper bag from Kroger cradled in her arms when they walk out the front door. 

"Gloria Hernandez, you are under arrest please drop the bag and put your hands in the air," Dan says. 

The bag drops but she's holding a semi automatic when she does. Dan curses under his breath. This he wasn't prepared for. 

Gloria is armed for bear and armored cops and they are standing between her and a clean get away. Dan wishes this was more like the first time they took on the cartel together: automatic weapons and a fast car. They circle until Gloria is in front of the trailer and Dan and Molly are right against his truck. 

Molly's talking slow and steady and completely unprotected, like Gloria will see reason and no one will have to get hurt here. It doesn't seem likely, especially now that the grandmother is cursing them all out in rapid fire Spanish. 

He reaches through the open truck window and calls for back up, but Hondo is a one cop town and SWAT has to come all the way from San Antonio. There is just him and Molly and hopefully some good luck. 

But Dan hasn't seen good luck since he arrested Billy Parker and he's not going to see it today. Instead, he sees the barrel of Gloria's gun come up as Molly pushes him behind her, and takes a step forward into the bullet. He’ll tell himself later it was instinct. It’s not though, he knows, she's made her choice. 

Even off footed, his bullet finds Gloria between the eyes and she’s dead on the ground as the locals pull in, sirens screaming and he dives for Molly. 

She’s smiling, blood staining her teeth, but she looks happier than she has since before Billy was arrested. 

He kneels down beside her and pulls her against his chest. 

"Dan," she manages, but her voice is weak and wet. 

"It's okay, now," he says, giving her lie back to her. "It's okay, Molly."

She sighs once and is gone, leaving him alone in a pool of her blood in the middle of nowhere Texas. 

He thinks this was always how they were going to end. 

***

After, once the paramedics have taken her from his arms, once he's been debriefed, once he's been sent home on leave, Dan goes to talk to Billy. 

The funeral is tomorrow, and all the extra cars at the Ranch must be family. The house is full when Lulu opens the door. "Uncle Dan," she says, and his heart breaks all over again. 

"Hey, Lulu-belle, is your dad around?" He asks. 

"Come on," she says, and he follows her through the house and out back. Billy's got a beer in one hand and his gun in other, and so Dan sends Lulu back inside. He doesn't want her to see this, no matter how it goes. 

"Thanks," Billy says, and takes a swig from the can. "You know she and Hailey own this place now. Guess Molly didn't trust me after all." 

"More like she didn't trust Jake, I think." 

Billy looks at him a little too keenly for the amount of alcohol the empties full of bullet holes imply he's consumed. "I'll never understand why she went back to him, even with him buying this place for her. Of course I never really knew why she left him in the first place. She was always like that, even when we were kids. Never knew why she did anything. I liked you better than him, anyways. Even with the arresting me and all."

Dan had been planning on telling him everything: about the abuse, and the deal, about her stepping into that bullet, and what Molly had done for Billy. Now, though, Dan can't see anyway that that knowledge would help Billy. He's already looking at his gun in a way the makes Dan uncomfortable. Maybe it's better for this knowledge to stay between Dan and whoever writes her autopsy report. Maybe Billy should just get back to raising his girls and tending his cattle and leave all thoughts of killing Jake Colton to Dan. 

"I wish she'd liked me better, too," he ends up saying. 

"You were with her in the end," Billy says, and shoots an empty off the rail. 

"Yeah, I was," he says. "I was there." For a moment all he feels is her blood on his hands, soaking into his skin, staining him forever. She'll always be there. 

"Hey, man," Billy says, shaking him out of wherever he'd gone, "It's okay, I think she was probably happy that you were there. I think she loved you and she wasn't alone because you were there." 

The gun goes back into Billy's holster, and they both take a deep breath. 

"You're coming tomorrow," Billy says. It's not question. 

"Wasn't sure I would be welcome," Dan says with a shrug. Jake is blaming him for Molly's death. Loudly, and in the halls of government and law enforcement. "They're sending me to the New Mexico office at the end of the week."

"Jake is an ass, and you are family. She would've wanted you there." Billy is so sure and Dan wants to cling to that, wants to believe. "Meet us here before hand," He says. 

Dan nods. "I'll do that."

***

The service is at Jake's church. First United Methodist is only steps from the capitol building and the cops close down half the streets surrounding it for the procession. People stand and watch on the sidewalks and Dan just wants to send everyone away until it's just him and Billy and Becca and the girls. Not this three ring circus. 

The service is nothing Molly would have ever picked. A train wreck brokered between Colton and the Rangers. She's the first female Ranger to die in the line of duty after all, and Jake will use anything to get re-elected. The governor is there and senators and state senators and every branch of law enforcement. Dan figures there are more people here who had never met Molly then have. 

He shakes hands with all of them because Billy won't let him leave his side and Jake's not going to pick a fight with the guy who killed his wife's killer at her funeral. It leave him feeling tired and used even before the pastor starts talking. 

Dan has to block him out. Has to not hear about Jesus or heaven or judgement day. None of those things are Molly. Molly whom he loved and lost twice over. Instead he focuses on Lulu, fidgeting between him and Billy. Her dress is black and stiff and her hair is up in ringlets and it all looks so wrong on her. 

He'd take her out of here if he could, but they are in the front pew and she's a little too old for that, so they sit together as Becca cries on Billy's shoulder and the pastor drones on. 

The service at the graveside is shorter, but Lulu holds his hand throughout the whole thing. She doesn't know it, but she's the only reason he doesn't break down and punch Jake in the face for what he did to Molly. Letting go of her hand to give her back to her father is the second hardest thing he does all day.

***

Luis corners him at the wake. "I saw the autopsy report." When Dan says nothing, Luis continues, "You knew." 

"Not until the very end. I suspected something was wrong. I knew something had to be, but I didn't know what. I didn't know until right before we got to Hondo," Dan admits. 

"I believe you," Luis replies. 

"Billy doesn't know and I'm being transferred out," Dan says. 

"So Jake Colton isn't going to show up dead anytime soon."

"She made me promise not to kill him, not unless he tried to take the ranch away from the girls."

"That's a shame," Luis replies. "But probably for the better. I'll keep an eye on him for you."

"Nothing much either of us could do," Dan says with a shrug. It's true. He knows she got those bruises in the autopsy report from Jake, but he's got no proof of that, no proof Jake ever laid a hand on his wife. He's a state senator, besides, even with proof it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere. 

"Still," Luis says, and Dan nods.

"Still."

***

Movers have already come and packed up his life. His things and his plane are already headed to New Mexico. It's just him left. 

He said goodbye to the Parker's yesterday. Has a folded up crayon drawing of him and Molly and Lulu in the inside pocket of his jacket and made a promise to call when he gets safely to New Mexico. 

He will, just that once, and then Dan will have to let them go. There's work for him to do, to bury himself in there. Work and putting his broken life back together into something functional. He can't let his head stay in Texas. If he dwells on this too much, he'll end up putting a bullet into Jake Colton's brain and he promised Molly he wouldn't. He promises himself he won't put that bullet in himself, either. 

So instead, he swings up into his truck and sets out on the road into the rising sun and drives away. 

He keeps his promises, after all.


End file.
